The Looming Library Lending Battle 390
smitty777 writes "The NY Times is running a piece on the tug of war between publishers and libraries for e-book lending. In one corner are the publishers, who claim that unlimited lending of e-books 'without friction is not a sustainable business model for us.' For example, Harper Collins claims in this corporate statement that unlimited lending would lead to a decrease in royalties for both the publisher and the writers. The NYT author further states that 'To keep their overall revenue from taking a hit from lost sales to individuals, publishers need to reintroduce more inconvenience for the borrower or raise the price for the library purchaser.' Their current solution is to limit the number of readings to 26 before a book license must be renewed. In the other corner are the libraries, who are happy that e-books are luring people back to libraries, bringing with them desperately needed additional funding. With e-book sales going extremely well this year and the introduction of more capable e-readers, this debate is likely to get worse before it gets better. The Guardian also has an interesting related piece on the pricing practices of the Big Six publishers."
What does this statement mean? (Score:5, Insightful)
Keyword: "friction", in this context.
Don't read (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What does this statement mean? (Score:5, Insightful)
It does not really make sense as an argument... you had as much friction to go buy the book as to go rent it. I am really worried that in the digital age, the first sale doctrine is being completely obliterated. Before, you bought a book, a record, anything... you could lend it, resell it, break it even copy it for your own use as you pleased... now, bit by bit (no pun intended)... you get less and less rights on the products you buy
It's being handled. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure the somewhere in the depths of SOPA, the "library problem" is being handled.
Michael S. Hart (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Question... (Score:5, Insightful)
The good thing I can see it ebooks lowering the cost for indie authors, cutting out the middle man.
The bad thing is publishers can nolonger afford to pay writers $1,000,000 for a best-seller so there are fewer financial insentives for people to write.
What?! A library *lending* out books!? For Free?! (Score:5, Insightful)
For folks who want to read, and maybe even, learn? What is this world coming to?
Where's the Fahrenheit 451 Fire Department, when you need one?
Ironically, it looks like we might see this day, since distribution of physical printed material can't be limited and controlled . . . by whoever wants to control it, for whatever reason.
Printed books . . . they just cause trouble.
Libraries (Score:5, Insightful)
Business aristocracy... (Score:5, Insightful)
... doesn't like when things like lowering their income through radical technology effects them instead of workers. It's ok to look down on the poor and people who's jobs are offshored as not being 'efficient' or 'competitive' but when it happens to business models or "intellectual property" (read: Intellectual monopoly) - heaven forbid!
WTF am I reading? (Score:5, Insightful)
With the In one corner are the publishers, who claim that unlimited lending of e-books 'without friction is not a sustainable business model for us.'
WTF is "friction"? And what is this "unlimited" thing? I don't know how the Amazon deal works but the Overdrive model allows libraries to loan a specific number of copies of each title. There's nothing "unlimited" about that. I'm patron 19 of 22 waiting for one of 3 copies of a title on my list. And what's "friction"? Do they mean I no longer have to haul my fat ass to the library to get the book? I don't have to do that buy purchase their book in ebook form, either. Seems like a pretty level playing field to me. And the artificial scarcity created by the licensing model might push me towards purchasing since I can get it right now instead of a few months from now. Is that what they call "friction"? If so, again...covered.
Publishers, stop acting like you sell paper. You don't. You sell content. Act like it.
And fuck publishers. (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no reason why it should show mercy to publishing industry - carriage industry produced something even. publishing industry is just middlemen. and now, unnecessary.
And look how they threaten new technologies and those who use new technologies - 'without friction' they say. wow. imagine it with carriage industry - if this suing frenzy bullshit had been around back at the start of 20th century, we probably wouldnt be using cars as we are using them today.
i say fuck them. you should say so too. society's progress cannot be held hostage to the desires of a minority interest to protect its private profit.
I can kinda see both point of views.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm a librarian (in Germany, though the issues here are basically the same), and I think the publishers do have a point. Two points, to be precise:
* A digital copy of a book can be borrowed by a library customer without them having to leave their home. No need to actually get to the library, hunt for the book and then having to get it back 4 weeks later. It's all happening online. That makes borrowing digital books from library a million times easier and more comfortable, and thus make libraries far more popular again.
* A digital copy of a book needs to be bought once, and then you'll own it for all eternity. That is, in theory, true for a physical copy of a book as well, but in practice a library has to constantly (re)buy books it already owns, whether the physical copy is starting to get old and worn or because books are being stolen/not returned, etc.
It is not unrealistic to assume that these two points combined might result in financial losses for the publishers, and a solution for this might have to be found. The suggested 26 uses per digital copy would mean that popular titles would have to be renewed roughly every 2 years (assuming a standard borrowing time of 4 weeks). Currently, the rule of thumb is that a (physical) book should be renewed once it is older than 5 years at the latest. Not all titles are borrowed out constantly, though, so it's entirely possible that the costs for the library would not rise even with the 26-uses-per-copy rule.
Re:No, not really (Score:5, Insightful)
Give them a basic income so they can concentrate on doing things that contribute to the more rapid advancement of knowledge, instead of working to impose artificial scarcity.
Re:Information is time is money (Score:5, Insightful)
There's really no difference so long as they adhere to the "if we only have one digital 'copy', then only one person can have it checked out via overdrive at a time". In the past, they only bought the books people actually read anyway (no library has a library of congress size collection of books, and they even sell off their old books to make room quite often).
I'm always amazed that libraries have stayed around as long as they have; very thankful for that, but still amazed. If libraries didn't exist right now, and someone was trying to start some, I'd imagine publishers would be just as scared, even though it means a whole lot of book sales to the libraries, a handy distributed archive for free, and a bunch more potential readers (ex. people that might not have the cash on hand to buy a bunch of books now, but might later on, or even people that simply lack the physical space at home to store them).
Forget this being bad for publishers for a second... ebooks could be very very bad for libraries in general. As long as Overdrive has the copies, there's no need for the libraries themselves (there's still a need for the money to buy the ebooks, but that could get diverted from the libraries to overdrive or similar).
Personally, I think the requirement that ebooks only be checked out 26 (or whatever) times before they have to buy another copy is just ridiculous! I'll concede that restricting each copy to only be used by one person at a time is an understandable correlation to the current physical world, but even that is 100% arbitrarily imposed. Unless society allows things to become extremely draconian and Fahrenheit 451 -ish then, at some point, ebooks and mp3's are almost certainly going to be freely available to all (maybe after some tax to support the storage and bandwidth)... there's simply no technical reason to prevent that.
It's the printing press all over again, and the world will adapt (er... the world at large will drag the small minority that are part of the publishing industry along kicking and screaming the whole way). If I were in print, I'd be scared too - they're going to go the way of monks handwriting bibles eventually.
The real question is how the authors will get paid. If we did have a universal system that had all ebooks freely available, then I'd suspect all other ebook distribution would damn near stop (including giving your friend a copy of your ebook, since they could just go get it themselves for free). If that happens, then we'll have very solid stats on downloads per-title. That could be used to pay the authors. Number of music tracks owned per-person is certainly much higher now than it was in the days of LP's and tapes. Number of books owned is likely to go the same route. Thus, authors could be paid a very small amount per download of their book, and still make approximately what they make today.... we'd just have to get that money into that system somehow (tax?). This is probably a good 20years off still before it gets anywhere near that point... in the meantime, I expect a lot of fighting/kicking/screaming/drm/laws/etc from the industry.
Re:Maybe this is a sign.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Evolution is finely tuned, revolution is almost invariably bloody.
What's happened with Digital is that there's been a revolution. The old establishments are fighting hard to last long enough to evolve some new method of staying in business (and employing people) and continuing.
In the meantime, we have a fight with lawyers, as people try to hold on to the old ways (same as happened with the introduction of the printing press).
The simple press of reality will eventually force the matter, and digital will start to be what it should (i.e. very low cost, almost zero scarcity). What's good for society at large is a slow, planned migration to this, rather than a quick scorched earth approach.
That being said, I'm not saying "Suck it up", otherwise the extremely conservative may well get legislation in place that will effectively break progress for a long, long time.. We all have to keep fighting the abuses that are laid on by the corporations to obtain the freedoms that society needs to flourish. It's an eternal fight.
That's life though.. Without the struggle, there's no progress.
Re:No, not really (Score:5, Insightful)
"...not a sustainable business model for us" (Score:4, Insightful)
So why does your business model need to be sustained?
Publishers are missing the advantage of eBooks (Score:5, Insightful)
They just need to make eBooks cheap enough to make it not worth a trip to the library to borrow a free eBook (I don't know if you actually do have to go to the library to borrow an eBook, but maybe you should, causing some friction to the process).
If a eBook costs $10, then it might be worth it for me to go to the library to check it out for free.
Lower the price to $3, and then it's not worth the trip for me. Lower it to $1 and I'll likely buy books just to try out an author, rather than staying with my normal safe choices of authors I know or recommendations.
I've bought a lot of content from Smashwords (usually paying between $0.99 and $4.99 for an eBook). I've bought very few eBooks from Amazon - it's hard to justify paying more for an eBook than it costs to have a paper book (often used, sometimes new) mailed to me.
Re:I can kinda see both point of views.. (Score:4, Insightful)
One additional point that hasn't been mentioned yet is that the price of an ebook usually has lower printing, inventory, and distribution costs than an actual physical book, a fact which is not usually reflected in its price. And sometimes, the ebook version can be the only copy available if the book is out of print in the real world.
And there is also the possibility that some ebooks help drive the sales of their physical counterparts sometimes. Now, I'm not saying that this happens all the time, but in the case of very high quality books, having the electronic version of it is often not enough, and having a good electronic version can often drive one to track down a copy of the real physical book in question.
Re:What?! A library *lending* out books!? For Free (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I can kinda see both point of views.. (Score:4, Insightful)
This would be like car manufacturers bitching about rental companies maintaining their own fleet for too long because the regular maintenance keeps the cars from falling apart too fast and keep the rental companies from buying new ones more often.
Re:What?! A library *lending* out books!? For Free (Score:5, Insightful)
"I'm sorry ma'am, but federal law requires that I incinerate this ebook!"
"But... WHY?"
"It's already been looked at 26 times."
?
Re:And fuck publishers. (Score:4, Insightful)
Can I make a suggestion that we stop using the horse and carriage versus the car analogy? It doesn't make sense. As long as you want books to read, you need people to write them. This involves work. The comparison to the "horse and buggy" is flawed because when people buy cars, they stopped needing horses and buggys, which puts them out of business. The creation of books for you to read still requires the labor of authors to write those books, which means you're essentially arguing that you've found a way to not pay the authors but you still want authors to come around and do the work.
Re:Maybe this is a sign.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No, not really (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Don't read (Score:3, Insightful)
"'To keep their overall revenue from taking a hit from lost sales to individuals, publishers need to reintroduce more inconvenience for the borrower or raise the price for the library purchaser."
Anyone who genuinely believes the above is going to reduce piracy/increase profits for the publisher is an idiot. The degree of inconvenience/expense a customer will endure in order to acquire a legal copy of a product is limited. In the digital age, you cannot shutdown piracy the way you could with purely physical products, and the book/music/movie/television industry needs to just stop trying. They are in competition with the pirates for market share, and not primarily in terms of cost. Of course there are some people who will always pirate a product because they are cheapskates, but there are far more people who would much rather have a legal means of obtaining a product that isn't laden with DRM, the inconvenience of going to a physically different location, or other restrictions.
The music industry was the first to get slapped with the wake-up call that DRM is anti-customer, and that digital distribution actually leads to bigger profits, despite low price points. The other entertainment industries would do well to take these lessons and run with them.
Re:No, not really (Score:5, Insightful)
Right. Because there's nothing to be gained from getting kids to enjoy reading. It's not like they'll carry that forward later into life.
Re:No, not really (Score:5, Insightful)
Professional writers are discovering that they can make far more money by self-publishing on the Internet than they can by working through a publisher, and by charging much less for their works, at that.
See A Newbie's Guide to Publishing [blogspot.com].
Publishing companies add nothing of value to the process, and are simply parasitic.
Re:No, not really (Score:0, Insightful)
Really? How does a living wage have fuck all to do with "North Korea"? You don't actually know shit about DPRK except that it's commie, and commie is bad, right? Idiot.
gigapedia (Score:5, Insightful)
I borrow my books from library.nu because they've generous lending terms.
Authors and editors are valuable, but publishers are basically parasites nowadays.
Re:No, not really (Score:5, Insightful)
Not entirely.
I am in the process of publishing my first book (as an e-book, incidentally). I could self-publish through Amazon with ease. But I wouldn't mind someone taking care of all that busywork for me, and doing some marketing, and for his efforts take a cut.
It depends on what exactly the publisher is doing for you that matters.
Re:And fuck publishers. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:No, not really (Score:1, Insightful)
Get paid a comfortable salary for no work and you just have to put out any old trash? Once that becomes popular who is going to be paying that comfortable salary? I can assure you that most people I know will gladly stop working for that, after all that is all Social Security Disability has become in this country and that bit alone is bankrupting the federal government.
Ahh, to be liberal and not have to deal with the reality of economics.
Re:What does this statement mean? (Score:5, Insightful)
Even with 70% royalties, an ebook sold for $3.99 per copy will generate a pre tax income of $27,930 per ten thousand copies sold. Hardly a rich living. And this would have to be repeated every year for an author to have an income somewhat near that of a school teacher.
That's why you write more than one book a year, every year. Then ten thousand fans will allow you to live pretty well.
And note that someone who sold 10,000 paperbacks through a trade publisher would make more like $5,000 and they'd disappear from the book stores after a few months. Those self-published e-books will be available forever, and every new fan who finds your later books is likely to go back and look at some of the earlier ones.
Libraries could purchase ebooks and lend one out for each copy for a specific time.
Which is exactly what they currently do, and is a reasonable compromise. The publishers also want to force them to buy the book again after they've lent it out a few times, which is insane.
Re:gigapedia (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree with the sentiment but remember in many cases publishers pay for the editors. Unless a new business model where editors and authors share in royalties, skip publishers, and go straight into electronic distributors arises there will be a need for someone to pay editors.
Re:No, not really (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:No, not really (Score:5, Insightful)
First off, you're not giving people money to write, you're giving them money to provide a base-line standard of living, which in turn gives them the opportunity to write (or go to law school, or invent cold fusion, or anyone of a million things better than working 60 hours a week at McDonald's). The point of basic income isn't to replace the rewards for a useful job. It's to ensure that the struggle for existence doesn't snuff out our best and brightest. You know, we sent physicists to the trenches in WWI, right?
And to paraphrase, The problem with Capitalism is it's broken. It can't deal with a society where there's only 10 or 20 hours of work a week to go around except for maybe a top 5% of creators. Most people, if you ask them, agree that we're not going to let that other 95% die in the gutter. So, to ask a serious question: what do you propose for a solution that ISN'T socialism? I've got a lot of right wing friends who, when confronted with this reality either come up with something crazy (like returning to an agrarian society ala the Amish) or end up with Socialism is everything but name (e.g., missing the point by so wide a margin they go full circle and hit it).
Re:gigapedia (Score:5, Insightful)
Freelance authors need freelance editors, methinks.
Re:No, not really (Score:2, Insightful)
These are the fatal flaws with hard-core socialism / communism: you have no reliable, accurate way to determine the best way to allocate resources.
And that differs from capitalism how? Have you looked at the world economy lately?
And in the thrid corner (Score:4, Insightful)
And in the third corner are the consumers, who just want to read the damn books and just go to the next Torrent site, don't care about copyright anymore because the greedy cooperations have made a farce out of copyright. We just download a 200MBytes Torrent with about 100 e-books and don't give a crap.
You know how to increase competition and profits? Just limit the copyright term back to the good old 7 years (+7 years extension). That would finally open the market, break up the monopolies we have now, and bring the entertainment industry much more profits overall.
I really can't understand how your American people are good with it that you grand one company an unlimited monopol-right to a good. Aren't you all for pro-markets, pro-competition and anti-regulation of markets?
Re:No, not really (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem with Capitalism is it's broken.
Capitalism is the worst system ever invented. Except for every other system ever invented.
Capitalism is the only system ever created where wealth is a renewable resource for everyone as long as they are willing to work and/or come up with an idea, skill, or invention that's useful to someone else.
Where Socialism, Fascism, and Communism are systems that require people to act against their natural tendencies (working harder and going further than required in a system where everyone is rewarded and punished equally and where incentive and thinking out of the box are not survival traits), Capitalism instead leverages self-interest and the desire for people to better their lot to improve things for everyone and create wealth & prosperity where there previously was little or none.
Capitalism has raised more people from poverty than any other system ever created.
Capitalism has allowed more people to live in more relative freedom and at a higher standard of living than any other system ever invented.
Capitalism has allowed the US to provide more humanitarian assistance to those in need around the world than any other system or country in history.
For these reasons and many more, "Progressivism", Socialism, Communism, and Fascism are doomed to failure and to taking their rightful places on the junk heap of failed ideologies.
Strat
Re:No, not really (Score:5, Insightful)
These are the fatal flaws with hard-core socialism / communism: you have no reliable, accurate way to determine the best way to allocate resources.
Socialism can determine resource allocation based on fair metrics: popularity, cost/benefit to society as a whole and to the individual, democratic polling and so on. Capitalism's flaw is that it can only determine the best way to allocate resources by looking at what makes the most profit, which can be at odds with what is best for society (e.g. Fox News ot The Daily Mail/Sun newspapers).
Capitalism only works when socialism lays down some pretty strict rules to skew the results. When we fail to do that the result is bullshit like the Murdoch empire and the global financial meltdown. Left to itself capitalism just lurches from boom to bust and back again.
Re:No, not really (Score:5, Insightful)
not quite. Capitalism would have destroyed the entire economic system in the last few years. Fortunately, the governments and their taxpayer funds were there to bail out the banks and prop the whole thing up.
Capitalism is just as flawed as the rest of the systems. To point out one above the others is an ignorant choice. However, the others are flawed too.
The world is a complex place, to try and choose one system to rule is too simplistic to really work. What you need is to take from all of them, mix it up a bit and try to tweak it as you go to ensure smooth working of the system.
So unfettered capitalism would have the peasant workers killed for being unproductive while a few super-rich got richer and richer and more and more inbred and stupid. You'd end up with a truly stagnant society where the talented poor could do nothing to fix the problems and the decadent rich cannot conceive of change.
So you have capitalism for the majority, but then ensure its regulated so the poor do not starve (socialism!), the rich do not take over the world (communism!) and everyone has to abide by rules that are enforced by others (facism!)
After all, you say "capitalism has allowed the US to provide more humanitarian assistance"... a) that has no place in a capitalist system - charity is a socialist concept (unless you're subsidising a market so they can purchase more of your stuff, but that hardly applies to dictatorial African states.. unless they're buying arms of course... hmm), b) the US is technically poorer that most places, the only reason you're not the recipient of humanitarian aid is because you've received it in the form of debt (so it doesn't count as aid). if you had any chance of paying off the national debt, then maybe you'd have a point. Chances are, China is going to be paying your way for you for some time.